1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a card edge connector including a substrate having pads provided on its end part (card edge) and a connector having contacts corresponding to the pads, a substrate used for the card edge connector, and a connector used for the card edge connector.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional card edge connector includes multiple conductive contacts arranged in parallel on the sides of a connector, multiple insulators for containing the contacts, and a substrate corresponding to the connector that includes multiple conductive pads corresponding to the multiple conductive contacts. A card edge connector disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model Publication No. 6-86278, which includes a connector and a substrate, has a pair of latch type levers provided on the sides of the connector and a pair of notches provided on the sides of the substrate corresponding to protrusions of the pair of latch type levers. After inserting the substrate into the connector, the protrusions are engaged with the notches by pivotally rotating the pair of latch type levers. Thereby, the substrate is fixed to the connector.
The card edge connector disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Utility Model Publication No. 6-86278 includes notches and protrusions to serve as an engagement structure for fixing the substrate into the connector. Because the protrusions are to engage the notches by pivotally rotating the latch type levers after inserting the substrate to the connector, the card edge connector requires a clearance to be provided between the protrusions and the notches in an insertion/removal direction. Therefore, the card edge connector requires pads to have an additional length that is long enough to absorb looseness in the insertion/removal direction caused by the clearance after the substrate is mounted on the connector. However, this may cause the generation of branched portions at the contact points (a stub) formed by the pads and the contacts. The branched portions could become a by-pass of a signal transmission path and adversely affect high speed transmission.